


So Much Bread, So Little Time

by wolfwithpanthereyes



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Baking, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 04:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12290805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfwithpanthereyes/pseuds/wolfwithpanthereyes
Summary: In between gardening and visiting Cosette, he was granted that most precious of resources.Time.





	So Much Bread, So Little Time

**Author's Note:**

> Originally a tumblr prompt where I was given the title to write a fic around. This is the resulting fic.

In between gardening and visiting Cosette, he was granted that most precious of resources.

Time.

Hard labour had been all he had known for many years, fueled by the need to provide for his sister’s ever-growing family and by the butt of a guard’s gun in Toulon. After Toulon, after the precious gift of candlesticks and silver, he had chosen instead to strive towards a future where he was in a position to help those who might otherwise have ended up in a similar situation to his past.

But now, instead of a town to save and protect, there was a daughter - a gift he had never expected to receive, a gift more precious even than the candlesticks he still prayed beside nightly. His attention was wholly fixated on her well-being and happiness. Cosette was content within the convent and thus the man once known as Jean Valjean grew to be content, too.

With security granted for Valjean and Cosette, he could avoid the past and pause in his worriment of the future, and instead learn to take joy in the small pleasures of the here and now. In Fauchelevent, Valjean discovered a willing companion, while Cosette continuously blessed his days with her chatter of convent life. It did not take long for to Valjean find the scent of the blossoming flowers under his hands that much sweeter.

The girls would sneak to Valjean sometimes, full of giddy nerves at the prospect of the nuns catching them conversing with a man. Valjean indulged them as often as he could, as Cosette had asked him to, delighting them with facts of why he undertook the gardening rituals that he did. Their favourite was in winter, when he would gently break a seemingly dead twig for them only to reveal the pale green shoot within that proved the plant to be thriving.

There was another woman who would talk with Valjean too, on occasion - at first to request bunches of nettles for the purpose of soup to feed the girls, and later small inquiries about the weather and suggestions for broths Valjean and Fauchelevent could cook for themselves. It was not until she put forth a recipe for a certain kind of bread that Valjean admitted he did not cook bread himself, relying instead on the cheapest loaf he could buy when he was permitted into the city.

“Not cook bread?” she repeated, aghast, and without further ado Valjean was swept under her wing and into her kitchen.

He began to return to the cottage he shared with Fauchelevent with flour coating his skin rather than dirt, his hands almost spectral in the candlelight before he rinsed them. The bread kneaded and baked earlier, he would place at the table and share with Fauchelevent, and Fauchelevent would praise his bakery skills with a fervour that made Valjean colour in embarrassment. After all, the bread was only a misshapen brown lump with a crust so thick Valjean feared he or his companion would break their teeth.

Nevertheless, the next time Valjean left the convent he sought out baking materials instead of the usual ready-made loaf, and while Fauchelevent dozed by the fire in the evenings, Valjean would practice. Eventually he presented a small sweet roll to Cosette without ceremony during one of her visits; she took a bite and his heart ached in newly-familiar fondness at her resulting smile.

Baking became routine, a part of his life that ate into time he would have floundered otherwise. He tended the garden during the day and baked during the evenings, his work ready to be eaten come morning. The scent of fresh bread filled their small cottage. Cosette would visit and leave with her pockets bulging with hidden rolls for her classmates, and Valjean grew fond of the flour settling over his clothes like snowflakes.

Fauchelevent passed away one winter. Cosette’s arm pressed into Valjean’s as they rounded the garden and suddenly he was aware of how tall she had grown, how much like an adult she sounded as she talked of her studies.

There had been so much time and now all he had was an empty cottage.

He arranged for them to leave the convent.


End file.
